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Almost exactly two years after being acquired by Google, Motorola has released its first phone under new management: The Moto X. Representing the first true collaboration between the companies, and with Google on the verge of losing control of Android to Samsung, there’s a lot riding on the Moto X. At $200 on-contract, though, with mid-range specs, is this the phone you’ve been waiting for, or did the hyper oversell it?

The device itself weighs 130 grams, or about the same as the Samsung Galaxy S4. The back of the Moto X has an aggressive taper toward the edges. At its thickest point the device is 10.4mm, but slims down to 5.6mm. A 10MP RBGC “Clear Pixel” camera in the middle of the back offers excellent low-light performance — maybe even better than the HTC One, according to our preliminary hands-on testing.

The rumored customization options caused rampant speculation, but it’s all superficial stuff. Buyers can pick colors online and have the phone shipped out in four days or less. The phone comes with a black or white front, then any of 18 back colors. Additionally, the accent color around the camera lens and buttons can be any of seven colors. An optional message can be added to the back, as well as a note when the phone boots up. So, what if you don’t like it? Motorola will take it back, customizations and all, for up to 14 days.

Front and center on the Moto X is a 4.7-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280×720. Yes, 1080p screens are becoming commonplace, but a 720p panel at that size still offers about 316 pixels per inch. That’s almost the same as the new Nexus 7, and you won’t hear anyone complaining about the quality of that screen.

So the resolution is likely going to be fine for most potential buyers, but the reason the Moto X uses AMOLED (just like the recently announced Droids) is for Active Notifications. While the device is sleeping, the screen can light up only the pixels needed to relay important notifications, thus doing away with the need for a notification light and being more informative at the same time. AMOLEDs don’t use power to display black pixels, so this shouldn’t negatively impact battery life.

Speaking of that battery, it’s a 2200 mAh non-removable cell. That’s a bit smaller than some of the other flagship devices, but Motorola has streamlined the firmware to work more harmoniously with the hardware. Moto is claiming 13 hours of talk time, and 24 hours of “mixed usage,” indicating it should make it through a solid day of use.

Another reason Motorola was able to eke out more battery life with this device is that the X8 mobile computing platform is powering the Moto X. This is the technology announced alongside the new Verizon Droids last week, but now we have a little more information about it.

The X8 is billed as an eight-core system, but that’s a little misleading. The X8 is actually a software-optimized dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro clocked at 1.7GHz. This system-on-a-chip (SoC) has a quad-core Adreno 320 GPU (so we’re at six cores so far). The other two cores in Motorola’s eight-count are the natural language and contextual computing processors. These cores are actually not integrated with the SoC as was previously thought — they are elsewhere on the board and they’re not ARM cores. The natural language processor handles all the audio processing and noise cancellation, allowing the always-on voice features. As for contextual computing, that’s essentially combining sensor information and running the notification service while the phone sleeps. It’s also packing 2GB of RAM and 16 or 32GB or storage.

The Moto X will run Android 4.2.2 at launch with almost no modifications. It’s not a Nexus phone or a Google Play Edition device, but it’s close. Don’t expect immediate updates to the software, but a 4.3 update should be coming before too long.

The specific launch date hasn’t been announced, but it will be on all five US national carriers for $199 on-contract (16GB version). T-Mobile customers will have to buy it online from Motorola, though. The in-store models will only be white or black, but AT&T will also have kiosks where you can customize the phone and have it shipped. It will be sold through Google Play at a later date too. Curiously, Motorola has also announced that there will be different versions of the phone, with lower specs and sold at a cheaper price point on prepaid plans, but still with the Moto X branding.

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